Last night Twitter was home to a small, short storm of activity around the disappearance of Mark Pilgrim. Which was downgraded to the disappearance of Mark Pilgrim’s websites. Today’s comic (which features Eric Meyer and a random Internet jerk) is not meant to directly relate to Pilgrim’s situation. I’ve certainly poked at Mark before from this site, but I doubt whatever situation made him decide to 410 his online world is a laughing matter. For that matter, it’s also not any of my business.

I was impressed with the speed of online responses to the situation. Tweets led to emails, which led to people scouring contact records, which led to calling the police to get them to check on him. It was a fast, modern response to what could have been a crisis situation, and it helped restore a bit of my faith in people.

At which point, the trolls rolled in.

Meyer made a post about Mark’s online disappearance, pleading for assistance in confirming if he was ok. What followed in his comment section were mostly people hoping for the best or brainstorming ways to contact him.

Then there was a handful of thoughtless comments like this.

I completely agree with Jeremy Keith when he rails at companies like Yahoo for permanently destroying massive corners of the Internet. The thousands of people that made sites (hideous or otherwise) there weren’t the parties responsible for the destruction of the content. In some (admittedly few) cases there were even people still using the aging “first city” of the Web. But there’s also no doubt that many who had made sites there, such as online picture books of their family history, expected their efforts to last forever. Only to have some jerks bulldoze their memories, destroying a huge part of the early Web’s history in one foul swoop.

But when a creator decides they’re done with their own work, let’s not get on our high horses and deny them the right to terminate their own creative endeavors. Is Mark obliged to pay monthly fees for his own websites if he tires of them just because others find them useful? Does a webcomic artist have the obligation to keep his scrawls online forever just in case fans come back to look at them years hence? Does a teenager need to keep all of their embarrassing Facebook posts about how they were crazy-in-love with some girl for 36 hours just so we can all gawk later?

God, I hope not.

Look, if others want to make archives of existing sites in case they go offline, then do so with my blessing. I think preserving our legacy of websites is far better than losing them. But to expect the creator of any work to preserve their own original copy of any piece seems a bit strange. To call them selfish for getting rid of it so is doubly absurd. Should I have preserved every crayon doodle I made in the first grade?

I’ve never seen the 410 status code before now. It’s a strange beast. “Site’s gone, not coming back, move along!” Despite the fact that the Internet’s many sites are so easily lost, we tend to think of them as cast in some sort of digital stone. The idea that a useful site would go away, permanently, on purpose even, is almost too much to accept. But they can go, whenever the authors want.

To me the idea of deliberately burning my own sites seems like it’d be a pity. I did put all the effort into them after all. But I think we all need to remember that there’s a big difference between Nero burning Rome and Mozart throwing away compositions he’s no longer pleased with.

Mark’s many contributions would be sorely missed if they were truly, completely gone. I understand the pain of losing a valued resource. But as others have said, we still have access to archives of them. As for his own sites, they’re his to burn. Here’s hoping he’s going to be ok.

Seriously, if you ever can get to an AEA event, I implore you to go. It’s an awesome experience being surrounded by like-minded web geeks getting leading edge advice and techniques for that thing we do with making the web.

Look, let’s drop the issue of tribe for the moment: IE9 is a better browser than IE8, period. I won’t make it my steady gal, but it’s helping push the web in the right direction by getting Microsoft’s behemoth back on track with everyone else. I’m glad someone at AEA decided to lead the crowd in acknowledging that fact.

The photo comes from John Morrison‘s Eric Meyer Word Caption Contest, and the comic itself is my entry into that fun little affair. Some of you may ask: “Kyle, why does the squirrel care if he’s not wearing pants? He never wears pants!”

Why does Donald Duck cover his crotch, which is always exposed, only after he loses his shirt? There’s a subtle mystery to the whole affair of comic characters and pants that we should probably not try to dig too far into for the sake of our own sanity. It’s right up there with wondering what goes in your grandmother’s meatloaf.

I’m sure I could have made a nut joke, but I chose the high road.

If, like me, you’re not at An Event Apart, you can follow along with the wisdom, humor, and community at A Feed Apart. Which. Is. Awesome. I’m enjoying several of the new features that the feed supports, including Flickr appearing in the stream, session-based archives, etc. It’s all very sweet. Check it out if you’ve got the chance.

I’m tired of web-fed vitriol. I’m guessing that in the seventh century, people managed to find a lot of things to get really worked up over; but it seems that in the 21st century the Internet is providing an unparalleled opportunity for us to fight like wildcats over the most pointless of issues, like which of two different mega-rich corporations are the victim in a publicity battle.

I know for a fact that there’s a heaping dose of irony here, considering my own foray into the Apple vs. Adobe mega-battle that seems to have taken over my Twitter feed. But after some pretty reasonable tweets from some pretty reasonable people, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

Eric Meyer said it best a few days ago: I am, however, not very well equipped to hate a company nor the people who work for it. This will likely make me a bit of an outcast. Again.

This insight was followed up by the equally human insight from Jeff Croft: All one has to do is meet a few people who work for a company like Adobe or MS to realize how absurd it is to ‘hate’ them.

I disagree with certain actions on the part of either company in this “battle”, and in some cases, my opinion gets pretty strong. But I disagree even more with the increasingly acidic banter that this is fueling among developers, fanboys and media outlets. Everyone’s entitled to their two cents, but I’ve hit my fatigue point. I just don’t want to hear it anymore. Especially when it goes from reasoned discourse to saber-rattling antics.

So instead, let us meditate on the Internet’s true purpose: lolcats.

It also is my response to Jeremy Keith’s challenge (made at the event) to create an icon for “Push to Dispense Free Cheese.” I dare anyone else out there to do better.

No, really. I want to see that.

For the past couple of years I’ve followed the going-ons of An Event Apart through the Twitterscape. The inaugural comic of CSSquirrel featured AEA: New Orleans 2008 (and Andy Clarke’s underpants.) This year was the first opportunity I had to attend in person. It blew me away.

Let’s start with the speakers. They are top notch, cream of the crop, cutting-edge members of our website-making industry. They aren’t just paving cow paths (HTML5 philosophy notwithstanding). They’re kicking down the door of the future and lighting up places we’ve never been before. Even better, they’re sharing these cutting-edge thoughts with the rest of us.

I am fully incapable of transcribing in a single blog post what I learned there. It took me eight hours of working alongside Janae to figure out how to compress this information into what became four hours of presentation for our esteemed Mindfly colleagues, and that was with access to informative slides. So instead, let me point you towards some online writings that sum up the event and the lore contained within:

• Best AEA Yet (Summary) – Jeffrey Zeldman
• Put Your Worst Foot Forward (Zeldman) – Luke Wroblewski
• Object Oriented CSS (Sullivan) – Luke Wroblewski
• Anatomy of a Design Decision (Spool) – Luke Wroblewski
• The CSS3 Experience (Cederholm) – Luke Wroblewski
• Emotional Interface Design (Walter) – Luke Wroblewski
• Paranormal Interactivity (Keith) – Luke Wroblewski
• Everything Old is New Again (Meyer) – Luke Wroblewski
• Message and Medium: Better Content By Design (Halvorson) – Luke Wroblewski
• Seattle Memories (Summary) – Eric Meyer
• Article of Doubt (A Day Apart Summary) – Jeremy Keith
• AEA Seattle 2010 Flickr Group

As awesome as the speakers were, another amazing component of the conference was the attendees. I live in lovely Bellingham, WA. It’s about two hours north of Seattle, is nicely sandwiched between mountains and the bay, and is a great place to live. It is not, however, literally crawling with web designers in the same fashion as large cities like Seattle or New York. So to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of invested, devoted website-making peeps is a heady experience. With people coming from design studios, universities like UW, and even sites like I Can Has Cheezburger, it made for a great opportunity to talk shop with people of all different web design backgrounds.

At some point in the recent past I saw someone ask on Twitter if it was worthwhile to pay for a conference for information they could get later on a blog. I can say for certain that yes, it is. There is a quantity of data being that is shared in live meetings that any attempt by myself or others to fully regurgitate in writing is incapable of matching. Speakers absorb earlier comments by their fellows, incorporating ideas into their own presentations. Crowds at lunch and after-parties discuss the merits of the ideas discussed, bringing the focus of several hundred minds to the same issues in one short period of time. Friends known online become real concrete people with a firm handshake, a booming laugh, and other qualities that engrave the real feel of who they are.

Note to self: I forgot to actually acquire one of Dylan Wilbank’s excellent business cards. Dang it.

There’s one more comic that will finish this year’s AEA storyline. But knowing the quality of this event, having finally experienced it firsthand, I can tell you it won’t be the last time AEA gets the squirrel treatment.

Meyer, Zeldman and everyone else that made my two days in Seattle so awesome: Thank you.

As you can imagine, this sort of statement created a charged atmosphere in the web designer tweet zone. People had opinions, they shared them. Those were just a few examples. In general, things got a bit tense. It’s rather reminiscent of the last time I saw this topic come up during October ’09 (I’d joined in with a post about it which you can read here).

Should web designers know how to code in order to be taken seriously?

Jeff Croft’s response to the reignited brawl is to the point (warning – profanity-laced): You can read it here.

It’s always a very fascinating argument when this topic comes up. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it: Should web designers know code? (Elliot later discussed the topic himself in more detail here. Take a gander.)

Over the past couple weeks, some people have died. Well, thousands die every week, even without disasters like the one that has recently struck Haiti. With no disrespect meant to the many who have died, it was the death of two specific individuals that caused an attention-worthy explosion of conversation in my Twitter feed, and I didn’t know either one of them: Brad L. Graham and Jack Pickard. I linked their Twitter feeds, as I don’t know how enduring the website of either individual will be after their death (a topic addressed in more detail below).

Their passing started a discussion on death, both theirs and that of others.

Eric Meyer had a couple of tweets that highlighted the poignancy of loss, even over a digital medium. Jeffrey Zeldman, in a post entitled Posthumous Hosting and Digital Culture, addresses the Big Question (well, its little cousin): “Where do our sites go when we die?” I’d like to think that the entire readership of my site are aware of how fragile the survival of sites on the Internet is, as highlighted in this strip that discussed the end of Geocities.

If we hope to have any lasting legacy for friends, family or a curious future, we can’t hope for a copy of a book resting on a shelf for a few hundred years. Instead, we need to think, while alive, about how we’re going to preserve our digital identities (which have become a huge part of who we are) long enough so that those who come after can decide for themselves whether it was worth it.

Dylan Wilbanks recently had a presentation at Ignite Seattle about this very topic. Everyone Coredumps, he reminds us, and he addresses both the grieving process and how to preserve your online data for future generations. He also discusses viking funerals. Check out his slides for thoughts on the topic, especially the tips on keeping your websites alive beyond the grave.

I recently was reminded by my registrar that I need to get this site’s domain registration renewed. It’s disturbing to think that if a bus hit me today, the laughs I’ve created would simply disappear at the end of the month, well before any tears from my passing would (hopefully) have ended.

I think I’m going to go get that renewal handled right now.

Although I’m deeply in love with the Internet and its delicious offerings, I find that the 21st century is running at a pace that is accelerating and doesn’t allow for much leisure, even during your leisure time. My own plate is rather full, even outside my work hours, with various online and offline activities that result in my bitter laughter when someone asks what I’m doing with my spare time this week.

If, as a web developer, I were to fashion a pub, I’d probably call it the Pilcrow. I’m blaming all the typography nuts that are in my feed reader. Hence it plays stage for a look at what I imagine leisure would be like in the middle of nowhere, preferably without any wifi or 3G signals, leaving you with no choice but to put down the phone and look at who’s next to you.

True to the premise of slowing down, this comic was inspired by some older posts on the blogs of the notables above. When Dan Cederholm updated the design of SimpleBits, he spoke briefly in his post Woodpress about his desire to start writing posts more often, and not for search engines or tutorials, but for conversation.

Ethan Marcotte picked up the thread in an entry by the same name, complimenting Dan’s redesign and realizing that his “quasi-tumblog” wasn’t entirely cracked up as he wanted it to be.  He then quoted a sentence from this post by Merlin Mann that really hit me where it counts: Jesus, I miss paragraphs.

Amen to that. I love Twitter. It’s a great way to get an idea out quickly, to share links and views among peers when time is short or when dealing with a keyboard the size of my thumb. But sometimes I feel like I’ve lost the ability to take my time and write at length because of that need to get the ideas out quickly.

The clincher for me was Elliot Jay Stocks’ contribution to 24ways.org (the web designer’s advent calender) entitled A Pet Project is For Life, Not Just For Christmas. It’s a great read, discussing the need for our own pet projects as a form of relieving work pressure, collaborating with friends, and improving our quality of life. I couldn’t agree more. CSSquirrel is in essence a pet project, but lacks that collaborative nature that can be so addicting. I need to find some quality geeks and a wacky idea and get rolling. To me, these sort of projects are an equivalent the fixer-uppers in the garages of our fathers. They’re there for some peace and the opportunity to play with your toolset.

So I don’t know about you, but one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to find a way to slow down where it counts, and tinker more where it doesn’t. Or the reverse of that. I’m not sure which.

(Regarding Meyer and Keith’s presence in the comic: Eric Meyer wrote on Twitter about applying to truck-driver’s school on a day off. Fictitious or real, I found it hilarious. I also recently re-discovered the Salter Cane website, featuring a band including one Jeremy Keith on bouzouki. I’ve found the music rather enjoyable, and may have to purchase one of their albums.)

As this photo conclusively proves, the people above (minus Chris Wilson and the unicorn) gathered in the recent past to discuss something very vital. Contrary to popular rumor, it was not the secret location of the Holy Grail or harnessing the power of cold fusion. Nay, they were instead talking about HTML5. More importantly, they were talking about HTML5 as “authors”. For pretty much anyone who reads this blog and doesn’t work for a browser manufacturer, that means you, or your son (if your my parents. Hi mom! Hi dad!)

Like the Hardy Boys, these people were industriously searching for clues, especially clues along the line of “what the hell is HTML5 anyway, and how does it apply to a web designer?” After spelunking the depths of the spec, they surfaced with two things: Firstly, they declared that it was good. Secondly, (and for my purposes, more importantly) they chose  an identity to bind them: The HTML5  Super Friends.

Today’s comic is comedic salute to their bravery and choice of identity. They’ve already done us a great deal of good by recommending alterations to the footer element (which was already a source of annoyance to yours truly) which has now come to pass.

Keep up the noble work, dear heroes.

(And in case you wanted to know, Chris Wilson’s appearance was due to his tweet here regarding the presence of the unicorn on the HTML5 Super Friends page.)

This turn of events was so abnormal to my existence that I repeatedly pinched myself to ascertain that I was in fact, still alive. It was, in a word, freaking amazing, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity. For a guy that I’ve compared to a Romulan, planned to abduct, and confused with Rupert Gint, Eric Meyer seemed to be all too friendly to yours truly. Suspiciously so. You might find the fact that he’d choose to interview me at all quite an odd choice.

I’d agree, but then, maybe it wasn’t so innocent as that. Maybe, as today’s comic implies, it was a kung fu death trap.

Ok, ok. It wasn’t. There were no wuxia battles or bicycle kicks. It was simply awesome.

I’m sure if you visit my website you’re in one of three camps: Either you thought you were learning about squirrels (sorry), you’re my parents (hi!) or you’re already into web design. If you’re in the latter group, you probably have already heard of An Event Apart. If you haven’t, go check it out. Not only is it an awesome two-day conference about standards-based design (which is so important in our ever-growing modern web), it’s a social network of good men and women who are obsessed with the same geeky stuff you are.

Which, I think you’ll agree, is pretty dang cool.